Iran state daily editor gets lashes, jail

An Iranian court has handed down a suspended six-month jail term and 10 lashes to the editor of a state-run daily who criticized the verdict but will not appeal against it, reports said.

An Iranian court has handed down a suspended six-month jail term and 10 lashes to the editor of a state-run daily who criticized the verdict but will not appeal against it, reports said on Sunday.

Kaveh Eshtehardi, chief editor of Iran daily, was found guilty after Mehdi Hashemi, the son of two-time former president and head of the Expediency Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, filed a complaint against him, the hard-line Javan newspaper said.

The report said the complaint came after Eshtehardi published a letter signed by student members of the Basij militia accusing Hashemi of "corruption." The court found Eshtehardi guilty of "libel, spreading lies, attributing financial corruption crimes to the son of the Expediency Council head," the Iran newspaper of whose Eshtehardi is the chief editor reported.

The court said the sentence is suspended for three years. Eshtehardi criticized the verdict but said he would not appeal against the sentence. "By handing down this sentence, the judiciary proved that it is really independent as it paid attention neither to the jury nor to the defense," Iran quoted him as saying. The jury had ruled that Eshtehardi had not committed any wrongdoing, the newspaper said.

Prosecutions against editors of government-run newspapers are rare in the Islamic republic even though authorities have cracked down harshly on the independent reformist media.